Music students at Lewis & Clark are singers and pianists, harpists and drummers, theorists and performers, Wagner buffs, metalheads, and world music devotees. You’ll find them using Reason in the Electronic Music Studio, practicing on the 9-foot Steinway concert grand in Evans Music Center, and studying Javanese court gamelan in ethnomusicology classes.

You’ll also find curious nonmajors taking courses like Jazz Appreciation and Music Fundamentals. Add our faculty members—an unorthodox and magisterial group of active performers, composers, and musicologists—and you have a robust, wide-ranging program devoted to the creation, appreciation and advancement of music in all its forms.

The Music Department at Lewis & Clark is unique in several ways: in addition to musicianship, literature, theory, and weekly lessons in their performance area, all our majors study conducting, instrumentation, and world music. We’re committed to the integration of Western and non-Western musics; our programs in musicology and ethnomusicology are exceptional, as are our programs in music education, composition, and performance.

From the Wind Ensemble to the Orchestra, raga and tala recitals to the Women’s Chorus, an opera composition to a thesis on heavy metal, our students are creating, studying, performing, and researching music in ground-breaking, exciting ways.